


When it Hits

by TheBashfulPoet



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Anger, Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotion Play, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gen, Hurt, Octavia and Clarke lashing out at each other, Spoilers up until 3x11, argument, bellarke if you squint a little, everyone is hurting, it's implied - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6606349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBashfulPoet/pseuds/TheBashfulPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and Octavia are each forces of nature, deadly and powerful. When they clash, it's catastrophic. Takes place a little after the events of 3x11</p>
            </blockquote>





	When it Hits

**Author's Note:**

> Before you read, I want you to keep in mind that the argument between Clarke and Octavia is ugly and both say things they mean and don't mean because they are aiming to hurt. Both these girls are emotionally and physically traumatized by the world they live in and this ficlet explores these emotions.
> 
> Disclaimer: Because I literally wrote this spontaneously from about Midnight until 2, it's safe to say it's practically unedited.

They had been driving for days, tearing through a forest none of them really quite knew this far out. Well everyone besides Clarke, who  had spent the past few days staring off out the window softly giving Bellamy directions under her breath. Raven constantly drifted to and from consciousness, still drained from ALI over exerting her body for the past weeks. The rest of them drove in complete silence. No one is quite sure how to handle anything but that silence. It's nearing the end of the third day when Clarke turns to Bellamy with the final directions for the day.

"Pull up just beyond those two trees on your left." She points in the direction she mentioned and Bellamy wordlessly maneuvers the car to follow.

They do a lot of things wordlessly from that point. Wordlessly Bellamy parks the car in the small secluded clearing Clarke led them to. Wordlessly they all piled out of the car and set up a modest camp. Wordlessly they all sit in silence staring at the flickering of a flame, each battling with the demons plaguing their thoughts for the night.

Astonishingly, it is Clarke who first breaks the silence. "Octavia"

The younger Blake looks up from the blade she held tightly in her fingers as if she were preparing to go to war the moment someone gave her the reason to. (Then again perhaps they were already trapped in another war that had begun long before any of them were even born, but the burden has fallen on their shoulders all the same).

"What do you want Clarke?" She asks tersely.

"I'm sorry about Lincoln. I wish-"

Octavia tenses and her grip impossibly tightens on the blade, " _You_ don't get to talk to _me_ about him."

"He was my friend too Octavia. I know what he meant to you, but that doesn't mean I don't feel his death too."

"You don't know shit, Clarke." She turns a pointed glare at the blonde, "You haven't even _been_ here."

"That's not fair," Clarke frowns, "If I would have known-"

"That's right Clarke you didn't know because when I fucking needed you, you chose to stay in Polis with your precious commander rather than come home to help your own people!" Octavia is on her feet at this point, the blade held dangerously at her side. "But what should I have expected? That's what you do best, abandoning the people who trust you the most to the wolves."

"Octavia," Clarke warns carefully through clenched teeth, the muscles in her jaw ticking with the restraint, but Octavia was just starting.

"Oh, I'm sorry did I strike a _nerve_ ?" She sneers, "Well I hate to be the one to tell you this, but people _die_ when you are around Clarke. Death follows in your wake with everything you touch with your blood stained hands. But you already knew that didn't you, _Wanheda_."

"Octavia!" This time, Bellamy is the one to step in, "That's enough."

"You," She whirls around and points a dangerous finger at him, "Stay out of this. Besides, I'm only saying what the rest of you are thinking." She turns back to Clarke, "Shall we go down the list?" She starts ticking down her fingers, "First you turned your back on Finn when Lexa called for his head."

Out of the corners of their eyes, everyone can see Raven visibly flinch from her spot across the fire. Silently, she lowers her bowl of food and quietly picks herself up and walks away. Sinclair follows closely at her heels, throwing glances back at the ticking time bombs waiting to go off. Octavia was only getting started.

"When he needed you most what did you do? You fucking drove a knife through his heart. But of course, it doesn't stop there, oh no. Then you let a fucking bomb drop on TonDC, a village with not only hundreds of women, men, and children, but with your own mother, _with me_."

"Octavia-" Bellamy growls, but Clarke stops him with a hand on his arm.

"Let her finish."

"Now let's talk about Mt. Weather and how you sent Bellamy, your supposedly precious co-leader, in there to die for your cause, and when that didn't work, he spent the time being tortured and drained of blood for hours!"

Clarke's eyes snap to Bellamy's, but they won't meet her gaze, and it confirms a truth she's not quite sure she's capable of handling. But, Octavia is ruthless and on a path for blood.

"Or maybe you want to talk about how you turned your back on everyone who had helped saved our people in the mountains and slaughtered them all when you irradiated the whole level." She takes a step closer to Clarke, "Tell me, do you see the faces of those you killed that day? The faces of the _children_ you wiped off this Earth?"

Jasper abruptly stands up, sending his bowl clattering to the ground in an ear-splitting crash. He looks between Clarke and Octavia and clenches his fist, "Both of you go float yourselves." He storms off into the trees.

Clarke watches him go, wishing she could offer him something to take away the hurt he was feeling, but there wasn't and she couldn't. Not when it was her hands that are stained with Maya's blood. Not when Octavia was right about the faces that haunt her dreams at night, those of the mountain mixing in with the others that had lost their lives at her hands.

"No, what you really want to hear is how even when I begged you to come back to Arcadia, you decided to stay in Polis with your little girlfriend. What happened to Lexa, Clarke? Did you get her killed too?"

Octavia finally gets the reaction she is hoping for; Clarke's eyes snap to hers and an icy blue stare meets the harden glare of hazel.  Clarke's face remains the emotionless stone mask she carved from the too many tears spilled over too many lives that somehow landed on her shoulders and the blood from those that slipped when her knees buckled under the weight. Her eyes told a different story. Her eyes burned with the fire that drove her forward each morning when the nightmares became too much and pierced so deep that Octavia flinched the moment they landed on her own. They were the eyes of someone who walked through hell and reemerged, burned and bloody and still kept walking through those flames.

"And what about you, Octavia?" Clarke's voice remains calm where Octavia's had risen, "What about the people you failed?"

"What are you-"

"I'm talking about Adam, who got strung up because you wanted to piss off your brother by flirting with one of his men. I'm talking about _us_ when you turned your back on Skaikru when you went off to play Grounder. I'm talking about the way you beat your own _brother_ to a bloody pulp while he was chained to a fucking wall and did nothing to stop you." Clarke's voice hardens, "I'm talking about Lincoln."

Octavia sees red, the pain still raw from watching his body hit the earth like a rag doll tossed aside in the mud. She can still hear the gunshot ringing through her ears in an endless echo stuck on repeat. The splash his body made as it fell. The breaking of her heart as if the bullet struck through her chest instead of through his temple.

Her fingers grip the front of Clarke's jacket and she hauls the blonde so they stand eye to eye. "Watch your fucking mouth."

But now it's Clarke's turn. Now Octavia is going to be the one to sit and listen to all the things she's done wrong. Now she's going to feel what it's like to know you could have saved someone but didn't.

"Why should I? Afraid I'm right?" Clarke laughs bitterly, "Look at you standing there judging what I've done to keep us alive, to keep _you_ alive, but you're no better. I know what happened the day Lincoln died, how you blame Bellamy for everything, but what about your blame Octavia? What about the role _you_ played in Lincoln's execution?"

"Shut your fucking-"

"Bellamy showed up to you unarmed and alone trying to help you break everyone out before Pike would even know about it, but did you trust him? No, you drugged him and chained him in a fucking cave. Even after Bellamy pleaded and begged for you to believe him, you spent what precious little time you had fighting with him." Clarke looks straight into Octavia's eyes, "Do you even stop to think that maybe if you trusted him, Lincoln might still be alive?"

"At least I fucking tried!" She spits, "At least I gave my fucking best to save him! Where were you, Clarke? Where the fuck were you?!"

"Well, I guess your best wasn't good enough."

And there it was, the very same words Octavia had said to Clarke just outside the entrance to Mt. Weather, right before Clarke walked straight into the mountain and murdered everyone who lived in it. Right before Clarke died and Wanheda was born.

The blade clatters to the ground and for a moment, everyone is stunned into a paralyzing silence. The moment shatters when Octavia's fist collides into Clarke's cheek, sending the blonde sprawling into the dirt. Octavia is quick to follow, diving on top of the girl to pin her to the dirt and connect another fist to Clarke's face. But Clarke is not the defenseless girls she was when she first landed; no, she is a warrior forged from the battles of wars long since fought. Clarke quickly bucks Octavia off and rolls them over so Clarke is the one on top. She returns Octavia's hit punch for punch when her hair gets yanked back and the girls are sent rolling once more. It's not long before a pair of strong arms wrap around Clarke's middle and she's being lifted kicking and streaming away from her opponent. 

"That's enough!" Bellamy roars tossing Clarke off to the side, "This ends _now_."

Clarke rushes forward for another blow, adrenaline pumping through her veins and rushing through her ears until all she can hear is the familiar call of battle. "What, can't take the truth, Octavia?! Can't face knowing that you could have fucking done better?! Welcome to my fucking world!"

Octavia thrashes against Monty's grasp (who had quickly jumped in to help Bellamy separate the girls), "Go to fucking hell Clarke."

Clarke relaxes against Bellamy's arm, "I already am."

She backs away slowly, before turning around and disappearing into the woods. Monty releases Octavia the moment Clarke disappears from sight. She scoffs and bends down to pick up her discarded blade, resuming her position but the fire as if nothing ever happened. Bellamy is staring off into the distance where Clarke walked off, his jaw tense and muscles twitching.

"You went too far, O." He finally grits out.

Octavia scoffs, "I didn't say anything that wasn't true."

Bellamy's eyes find hers for the first time since she told him that he was dead to her, "You went too far."  

He turns around and stalks off after Clarke.Octavia watches in silent disbelief. After everything Clarke has put them through, put _him_ through, he still would follow her to the end of the fucking Earth. Disbelief gave way to disgust and disgust gave way to anger. She snarls in frustration and shoves herself from her seat and stalks off in the opposite direction, leaving Monty standing there at the fire as he watches his friend disappear one by one into the pitch black blanket of the night with nothing more than a dying fire that he can't feel the warmth of anymore.

Octavia is running, hacking away at branches and vines that get in her say, but soon she can't see where she is going anymore. The tears have obscured what little vision she had left and her blade embeds itself deep into the bark of a tree. She tries to yank it free, but it won't wedge. The tears are flowing faster and harder. The bang of the gun. The splash of a puddle. The feeling of her whole life crashing to a fucking stop. Bang. Splash. Dead. She throws her head back and wails into the dead of night, not caring who can hear.

The wail carries back into the camp. Monty wraps his arms tighter around his knees. Jasper hurdles a rock deep into the woods beyond where his eyes can follow. Raven grips the metal bird in her hand so hard, blood drips down its wings. Bellamy punches the closest object in his vicinity, and Clarke covers her ears trying to block out the echoes of her past.

They were just kids, how the fuck did they end up this way?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading guys, I know it was angsty, but the idea would just not leave my head until I literally wrote the entire thing. It was also good practice with playing with intense emotions, so there is that.


End file.
